This study of over 100 kindergarten through 12th grade teachers in southern California focused on the exploration of teacher spirituality, specifically relationship with God and spiritual connection to others, through investigating its predictive role on teacher self-efficacy, specifically efficacy in student engagement, instructional strategies,…

In recent years, scholars have focused intently on improving success rates for men of color (notably Black, Latino, Native American, and Southeast Asian men) in community colleges. To address outcome disparities, many colleges have sought to employ targeted interventions (e.g., programs, policies, and practices); however, many of these efforts are…

This exploratory study foregrounds the important, but often understudied social side of pre-service teacher development and its relation to teaching performance in one university-based teacher preparation program in the US. We examine the extent to which pre-service elementary teachers' social relationships and perceptions of peer trust and…

Purpose: Increasing evidence suggests the importance of relationships between district and site leaders. However, there is limited empirical evidence regarding the social infrastructure between and among leaders especially as related to the exchange of advice related to reform. Moreover, we have limited understanding regarding the mechanisms that…

Many classroom climate studies suffer from 2 critical problems: They (a) treat climate as a student-level (L1) variable in single-level analyses instead of a classroom-level (L2) construct in multilevel analyses; and (b) rely on manifest-variable models rather than on latent-variable models that control measurement error at L1 and L2, and sampling…

Self-evaluations or self-perceptions of creativity have been used in the past both as predictors of creative performance and as criteria. Four measures utilizing self-perceptions of creativity were assessed for their usefulness as criterion measures of creativity. Analyses provided evidence of domain specificity of self-perceptions. The scales…

This study capitalizes on a unique, nested data set comprised of students ("n" = 531) and teachers ("n" = 45) in three high schools that explicitly incorporated student support roles into teachers' job descriptions. Drawing from research on student-teacher relationships, teacher effects on student outcomes, and role theory,…

This paper explored informal (after-school) and formal (elective course in-school) learning contexts as contributors to middle-school student attitudinal changes in a guided discovery-based and blended e-learning program in which students designed web games and used social media and information resources for a full school year. Formality of the…

Faced with expectations to improve student learning and increasing student alternatives, school districts are challenged to make system-wide and sustainable improvement in student learning outcomes. The national accountability movement is associated with a growing body of research that has considered the role of the district to influence student…

This exploratory study was an attempt to understand the types of affective learning. The study focused on beginning students who were enrolled in apparel construction/sewing laboratory in community colleges within Los Angeles and Ventura counties during the spring of 2009 (n = 155). The primary purpose of the study was to develop scales that would…

This study examined factors affecting motivation for reading, writing, and spelling in primary grade students using a new measure, the Early Literacy Motivation Survey (ELMS). First-graders (198) responded to questions measuring attributions, self-efficacy, and perceived competence. The ELMS uses scenarios and short tasks to contextualize the…

In the past decade the demand for highly qualified and especially trained teachers of students with special needs has exceeded the supply. To meet this deficit, alternative programs have sprouted up across the country. One such program, at CSU Fullerton, is successfully trying to fill that gap. Some 280 students have completed the requirements of…